Surely it's inevitable that the continent's giants will break away and form
their own competition

There is a widespread belief in Germany that Bayern Munich have become so good, so strong, so omnipotent, that they have simply outgrown the Bundesliga.

Their last defeat in the competition came back in October 2012. They won the treble last season, adding the Champions League to their domestic cup and league double.

This season, they have won the title with seven games and six weeks to spare and they have done so while operating on cruise control.

That should worry the rest of European football and it should, whether they are willing to admit it or not, alarm Uefa.

However, this is not because Pep Guardiola’s side are bound to become the first side to win the Champions League two years running. They are not destined to become the dominant football club on the continent for a generation.

A spirited, but limited performance by aManchester United side that sits seventh in the Premier League has shown they are not superhuman and that, contrary to what you might have been led to believe by the slightly over-the-top profiles of him, Guardiola is not a magician.

Yet, that is precisely why Bayern may be the biggest threat to the European football landscape for decades.

If Bayern are, as seems to be the case, going to find it so easy to win their domestic championship for years to come, they are, despite all the silverware and success, going to become bored. With boredom, comes the desire for change; a quest for new challenges and the creation of bolder goals.

They want to face arduous nights like their trip to Old Trafford more often, they want to go toArsenal and win and they want to take on Barcelona, Real Madrid andParis Saint-Germain home and away, so why not do it every year in a league format?

The Champions League offers Bayern their severest test, just as it offered Barcelona theirs during their golden years under Guardiola, just as it has for the various Galacticos sides of Real Madrid.

But even the Champions League has become little more than a procession for Bayern and the other superpowers of European football as they trot towards qualifying for the knockout stage.

It is only when the competition reaches the last 16, when the best play the best, that it really sets pulses racing. Increasingly, it is the same 16 teams, give or take one or two surprises, who reach this stage.

The Champions League replaced the “lottery” of the European Cup, an old-fashioned knockout competition played over two legs, because it was Uefa’s concession to the big clubs to keep them under its umbrella.

By creating a group stage with lavish prize money, Uefa pumped more money into the big club coffers, while heading off the threat of a breakaway European Superleague.

At one stage, they even followed one group stage with another, although thankfully this was scrapped.

The big clubs had formed their own body to represent their interests, the G-14, and had threatened to create their own competition where the best, richest and most glamorous clubs from Europe would play each other in a midweek league alongside their domestic ones.

The G-14 has since been replaced with the European Club Association, formed in 2008 with the mission statement of “directly representing football clubs at European level…..to create a new more democratic governance model that truly reflects the key role of football clubs in football.”

It is a more inclusive body, but it is still led by the same superpowers who created the G-14 as a rival to Uefa hegemony.

With the exception of Ekranas from Lithuania, all of the above would be prime candidates to compete in a European Superleague should one be formed. Interestingly the ECA chairman is Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, chief executive of Bayern Munich.

The idea of a European Superleague containing 20, or even 24 of the biggest clubs is not a new one. It has been repeatedly raised in different guises and various potential formats for the best part of 30 years, but just because it hasn’t happened yet does not mean it never will.

Uefa have managed to appease the big clubs with the Champions League, but they may soon come under renewed pressure to change the format.

A league makes sense to clubs like Bayern Munich who have outgrown their domestic competition and want to challenge themselves against clubs of an equal stature on a regular, say fortnightly, basis. A pan-European television audience would be huge and so would the advertising revenue.

They are not alone. Celtic were so dominant in Scotland this season they could barely rouse themselves to celebrate winning the title in the absence of the Auld Enemy Glasgow Rangers.

Celtic, though, are financially hamstrung by the relative poverty of the Scottish Premier League and they will never grow without something fundamentally changing in the way they compete in Europe

Paris Saint Germain have, through what appears to be a blatant breaking of Uefa’s Financial Fairplay Rules, turned themselves into potential Champions League winners.

In doing so, with the exception of another foreign billionaire funded club, Monaco, PSG have moved into an economic sphere that other French clubs cannot hope to compete with.

In Austria, Red Bull Salzburg have won their fourth title in six years thanks to the backing of the energy drink manufacturer.

In Spain, Atletico Madrid have emerged from the also-rans, but it is the first time a club, other than Barcelona and Real Madrid, has had a realistic chance of winning the title since Valencia a decade ago.

Atletico have a wonderful side, as did Athletic Bilbao a few years ago, but they, like Bilbao, do not have the money to resist huge bids for their best players, which will surely come in the summer. That should return La Liga to a two-horse race again.

Portugal have Benfica, Porto and Sporting Lisbon, Belgium have Anderlecht, Greece have Olympiacos and Holland have Ajax. In most of the Eastern European leagues it is the same.

The exceptions come in Italy and England, where the playing field, for differing reasons, has become a more level one. In Italy, that has been down to a lack of money, in England it is due to the huge sums pumped in by two television companies competing for broadcasting rights. In these leagues there are arguably a big four or five rather than one, two or three.

But in a country where, increasingly, La Liga’s El Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid draws as much hype as say, Liverpool vs Manchester United or Chelsea vs Manchester City, can we really still say a European Superleague does not make sense?

It is starting to look like making sense for Bayern and where the Bavarians lead, others tend to follow.